Eden has become such a little grown up. She’s a great helper with Grace and likes to do “grown up” things like make her bed, drink tea in the morning with Deda and do almost everything by herself. She’s also very bossy (I have no idea where she’s learned that…) and I often joke that Andy doesn’t really need me because he has Eden to mother him!

I often see Eden taking care of younger kids, even at child care, but it was really fun to see her trying to keep up with the older kids this past weekend while we were visiting the Cooks. Eden was quite inspired by the things that 4 and 5 year olds can do and decided very quickly that she wanted to be able to do those things as well, like swimming without her float and having races in the yard.

Eden is currently taking gymnastics and ballet and really loves both classes. She’s normally the only student in her ballet class and I think she likes the attention, although we have to continue to remind her to watch her teacher instead of herself in the mirror! She is thrilled by the stamps that she gets in her classes and was VERY proud of herself for the extra stamp she got in gymnastics last week for being a good listener. Eden has learned to flip around on the bar all by herself and is the only one in her class that can do it. She’s also started watching gymnastics on tv and is now a HUGE Gabby Douglas fan. We’re quite excited that Gabby is going to the Olympics!

Eden likes going to “school” and enjoys her Thursdays at child care and Sunday school. She also had an opportunity to attend a Wonderful Wednesday class without Andy for a few weeks and loved going to school without him (and talked about it constantly!).

While Eden is still a very happy and outgoing girl, she has entered a whiney stage which is not so enjoyable. Ben and I work hard to be consistent in not responding to her whining but it’s a challenge to not say to her “Stop whining!” 🙂 We’ve done a lot of traveling already this summer and Eden has been a trooper and has been pretty flexible with all of the changes.

We’re very proud of Eden and the enthusiastic, over-achieving, and loving rule-follower that she is becoming. It’s very fun to watch her grow up and we are so glad to be her parents!